Whenever I want to break out of the rather familiar and predictable world I’ve constructed for myself, I visit Paul Salopek’s Out Of Eden Walk blog.

With the assistance of National Geographic, Salopek is on a mammoth journey – an ambitious 7 year walk from the Horn of Africa to Tierra del Fuego – tracing the path of our ancestors as they set out to explore the world on foot.

The most recent post uses digital mapping technology and video to chronicle a portion of the walk – traversing Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

I used to fancy myself a world traveler. I imagined that I would see the world and feel at home everywhere, meeting and befriending remarkable people in exotic places. That was before I actually went anywhere and found out how uncomfortable travel can be for an introvert who is picky about food. Facing reality and acknowledging personal some limitations had the effect of shrinking my options.

Instead, I decided to ruin my footwear by puttering around the yard. My favorite shoes used to be gleaming white and spiffy, but pulling weeds, digging holes, picking up after the dog and mowing the lawn have given them a greenish-black tinge that could have been earned more quickly in some other, much more adventurous and tale-worthy way.

Alas, I will probably never make it to Jeddah. But following Salopek has given me something approximately like a real experience of being in a place. Of course it would be better to actually GO. But absent that, this will do.

What city would you like to walk across?